Benjamin Cameron

Benjamin Cameron (1834-) was a Colonel of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War who became a leader of the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina.

Biography
Benjamin Cameron was born in 1834, one of three sons and brother to two sisters, Flora and Margaret. His father was a doctor, and the family lived in South Carolina. The three brothers enlisted in the Confederate States Army when the American Civil War broke out in 1861, and he was wounded after a heroic charge at the Siege of Petersburg, earning the nickname "the Little Colonel"; his two brothers were killed in the war. He was sentenced to death for allegedly being a Confederate guerrilla, but President Abraham Lincoln was convinced to pardon him. Cameron returned home, but the Reconstruction era after the Civil War's end saw integration, something that Cameron strongly opposed. He became a leader of the Ku Klux Klan, so his partner Elsie Stoneman - a nurse whom he met at the Siege of Petersburg who was the daughter of abolitionist Congressman Austin Stoneman - left him out of family loyalty. Cameron was enraged when Flora killed herself rather than be raped by African-American US Army Captain Gus Smith, so Cameron had Smith captured and lynched for his role in Flora's suicide. He sent the body to Lieutenant-Governor Silas Lynch's doorstep in protest, leading to a crackdown on the Klansmen and the arrest of Dr. Cameron for keeping Benjamin Cameron's Klansman uniform. In 1871, Cameron led Klansmen into Charleston to rescue Elsie Stoneman from Lynch, who wanted to force her to marry him in exchange for Dr. Cameron's release. Cameron captured Lynch, and his Klansmen scared off Cameron's militia. The next election day, the Klansmen intimidated the African-Americans into not voting, and a white candidate was elected into office by the white voters. Cameron continued the racist struggle of the KKK in the following years, although Ulysses S. Grant eventualyl crushed the Klan.